Will someone please explain ns ram relating to video cards

[FredLocks]

Ive seen people talking about this in different forums. I'm planning on getting a Geforce3 Ti-200 or 500, and could use a little schooling as to what to get. ie 5ns, 4ns or 3.8ns, on my video card. And finally what is the purpose of the ns rating.

 

[hominid skull]

The ns rating on the ram chip is how fast the ram chips are. You will always want a faster ram, lower NanoSecond rating for the chips.

Basically it's the speed that the ram takes to return information that is requested via the program that you are running. The lower the number, the higher the speed the memory can run at and therefor better performance.

//edit.

Just to elaborate:

3.8ns is 3.8x10-9 seconds, so if take the ram 3.8x10-9 seconds to return some information.
Now if you devide 1 second by 3.8x10-9 you get the rated operating frequency of the ram chips
1/3.8x10-9=262MHz rated memory speed.

If that memory is DDR-Ram then you double the Rated speed to get the actual speed.
Therefor 262*2=515MHz DDR-Ram rated speed.

 

[FredLocks]

Thanks for the detailed response hominid, I'll look for the 3.8 or 4.